The Cobain Diaries

(Insanely late right now. I'm just stealing something verbatim from the Onion)

Journals, a book culled from the various journal entries of Kurt Cobain, recently hit bookstores. Among the revelations

• Admitted he had all of Sonic Youth's albums only so people would think he was cool
• Smoked pot once at summer camp
• Got to sixth base with Courtney Love
• Margins filled with drawings of monster trucks
• Thought racism, sexism was wrong
• Was upset Husker Du never wrote back
• Aug. 8, 1987: "The cackling vampires dance on our graves."
• Aug. 9, 1987: "Note to self: tequila and mushrooms don't mix"
• Sometimes kinda wondered if maybe Love was a power hungry, attention craving bitch with violent tendencies and no discernible talent who was riding his coattails to a major record deal and would eventually drive him to an early grave
• Despite all the problems they had together, always maintained a deep, abiding love for heroin.

Have a good weekend everybody. Go Illini.

Still searching for a coherent thought

Very random thoughts…

1) In what is probably the best news that I’ve heard all year, both Katie Holmes and Shannon Elizabeth are back on the market. I’m leaning towards Katie here and if you’ve seen the film The Gift, you’ll understand why.
2) Probably the most amazing fact is that Shannon Elizabeth is my age. Which means she was playing a high school student while in her late twenties. There is some Faustian bargain going on there that really needs to be examined. But I’ll have to admit, she looks really good for her age. I doubt any of my classmates look like that. I sure don’t look that good.
3) In looking at the concert listings I can get tickets for the Dave Matthews Tribute Band. Not the Dave Matthews Band but an incredibly lifelike simulation. And this show is at one of the biggest clubs in town. They are playing at a venue that is bigger than the one where I saw Social Distortion, Big Head Todd and the Monsters and Ani Difranco. While I will usually claim that there is a decent music scene in this town it’s at times like this that I really begin to think that the people here are insane.
4) We’ve got the Big 12 tournament in town this week so I’ve been seeing all the bars put up banners inviting fans of various schools. Not like they are using big words or anything, this is the Big 12 after all. The funnier thing is that they have put out this big LCD board in Westport that I can see from my dining room. I’m having dinner and out of the corner of my eye I see, “Welcome to Kansas City”, “March Madness” and random Big 12 logos. It’s tough to concentrate on eating when all you see is the Texas Tech logo.
5) I really think that there should be definite rules as to what can be on the communal television set in a workout room. For a long time the regular crew that is there when I work out had agreed that the only thing that could be shown was either Friends, Seinfeld, or a major sporting event (ESPN only, no curling championships on ESPN2). Apparently everyone has forgotten the rules. Today I worked out to Everybody Loves Raymond. Not exactly the most inspiring show in the world. Definitely doesn’t make time go faster. Still not the worst thing that I’ve been forced to watch, which was Oprah After the Show on the Oxygen network. If you ever want a forty minute workout to seem like it lasted for three days watch that show.
6) For the music fans out there, check out the Wakarusa line up (Wakarusa is a music festival held in Lawrence in June). Wilco, Son Volt, North Mississippi All Stars, Little Feat, Old Crow Medicine Show, my hopefully future wife Neko Case and many more. Yes, Wilco and Son Volt on the same bill. This might be the first chance in a long time for even the possibility of an Uncle Tupelo reunion. If you find yourself in Kansas, it might not be a bad option to end up at the show.

The Tao of Steve

(We’re going to continue in the “It worked two years ago, it sure has hell better work now” vein and discuss the movie The Tao of Steve. Seriously, I am reliving Spring Break 2003. Checking my old writer’s journals I wrote about this movie exactly two years ago this week.)

Anyway, The Tao of Steve featuring Donal Logue (who you know from Fox’s Grounded for Life and every other comment on VH-1’s I Love the [Insert Decade Here]). I’ll readily admit to stealing quoted from a number of movies and passing them off as my own. It’s one of the benefits of watching indie films, you get to appear smart with a lot less legwork. The Tao of Steve is different, since I borrow an entire philosophy from this one.

It’s a very simple idea, you must become a Steve as opposed to a Stu. See, Steve’s are cool. You’ve got Steve Austin (in both Six Million Dollar Man and Stone Cold forms). You’ve got take no prisoners pitcher Steve Carlton. And you’ve got Steve McQueen, who was cool and got the girls without even lifting a finger. That is what you are to emulate if you want to be successful in the social arena. And all you need to do is follow three simple steps: Be Desireless, Be Excellent, and Be Gone.

The first part is pure Taoism. You must empty yourself of all desire and learn to want without wanting, seek without seeking and pursuer without pursuing. I know, I know, wax on and wax off and all of that crap. But trust me, if you can cleanse your mind of desire it greatly increases your opportunities.

The other two parts are much more straightforward. Be excellent in the other’s presence. Basically just prove your worth, show that you are worth their oxygen. (Actually, that’s a basic rule of life, always provide evidence that you are doing more for the planet than just sucking oxygen and expelling greenhouse gases.) And the last rule, as someone once yelled at me, is “Stop hovering”.

Why am I writing about this? Or more accurately, why did I watch the movie again tonight? Well, it is first of all a really good movie. Nothing fancy but it is worth checking out just from a cinematic perspective. But really it is because the philosophy works and I’ve forgotten it over the past year or so. And it isn’t a trick about becoming someone who you are not, it’s about becoming the best person you can possibly be. Just three simple rules and some intelligence and you can succeed. So, I think it is time to give the Tao another try. And this time I’m going to follow through until completion.

Next movie review: High Fidelity, also known as “The book I should have written first” and “Who in their right mind cast Lisa Bonet in that role?”

The New Guy

I can’t believe that I forgot to bring this up last night. My short term memory must have completely disappeared over the past few years. You can keep the binge drinking comments to yourself, thank you very much. Anyway, the Simpsons did a great effort Sunday night to make me rethink my claim that they have jumped the shark. One, they had a great bit about restraining orders and the guy who remembers that his father taught him that winners never quit and never say die. Trust me, any guy who has tried to pull off the Say Anything move, which means every guy, knows that bit is funny.

What almost made me roll off the couch laughing was the following. Otto can barely control the bus on an icy hill so they break out the chains. As in the kids are dragging the bus up the hill. Uter: “This reminds me of Fitzcarraldo.” Nelson (punching him): “That movie was flawed.” Now there are only two groups of people who get that joke 1) fans of German film director Werner Herzog and 2) fans of the band The Frames who have an entire song based on the movie. I’m in the latter category along with maybe five thousand other people. It’s jokes like that that make the Simpsons cool.

Ok, so I watched The New Guy again tonight. Which if I’m not mistaken I also watched exactly two years ago. My future biographers along with those of you who have been part of the EC experience will know why this is important. Lots of good things in the movie. First of all, any movie with Lyle Lovett in it, including Lyle going “You’re never too old to change” is going to be a good movie. Also, there are enough cameos in the movie to make it a better parody of teen movies than Not Another Teen Movie. I mean you’ve got Vanilla Ice, Kool Moe Dee, Henry Rollins, Tony Hawk, David fuckin Hasselhoff, what else can you ask for? There is even a cameo that wasn’t a cameo then but is now, as Jai from Queer Eye is in the movie. Wow, I guess he really was an actor.

(Oh yeah, and Eliza Dushku. ‘Nuff said.)

Of course, the entire reason why I watched the movie was for inspiration. I’ve somehow found myself in the same situation as I was in two years ago, with a great need to reinvent myself and take control. Which is what the movie is about, in a weird teen comedy sort of way. I know that I am little too old to be taking my cues from movies about high school but if I’ve found one thing out these past few months is that real life is still like high school. You can still feel like an outcast, still feel picked on, still hate the jocks, all the cliques still exist. The fun thing is now you actually know how to change things and take control. All I know is that I watched the flick and now I feel like taking on the world. And hey, ending up with Eliza Dushku (or Zooey Deschanel for that matter) wouldn’t be a bad way to finish things up.

Tomorrow, quite possibly the best film of the decade, The Tao of Steve. The only film that has become its own philosophy. Well, besides The Matrix and Road House. Later.

Wrestling over tiny matters

I don’t have a coherent thought in my head right now. Ok, not like that is anything new but I just felt that it needed to be stated. On the plus side, I have a ton of random thoughts rattling around my brain so I figure that this is going to be one of those all over the board posts…

1) Had my windows open today, since it was in the seventies and I needed fresh air to counteract my latest cooking experiments. (Like most single guys, I’m not proud of the fact that anything that I cook tastes good. I’m proud of the fact that I can cook for myself and the majority of the time not burn down my apartment. Come on, I’ve only set off the smoke detector once in the past year). Anyway, I saw a warning sticker on the window that stated “Warning: Open windows may be hazardous.” You know, if you paid attention to the warning labels you would never leave the house.

2) When people ask me what my social circle is like, this story is going to come up. Went to see the North Mississippi All Stars on Friday night. So, who do I run into there? Someone from work? From church? From my apartment? No, of course not. I run into a bartender I know. I really have no idea what this says about me.

3) This was a crappy weekend for me basketball wise. Notre Dame lost, Duke blew a lead at North Carolina and Illinois lost its perfect season. For someone who does turn to sports when he is stressed out and takes comfort in his team winning this really was what I didn’t need right about now. On the other hand, Kansas lost so at least I have a little schadenfreude to fall back on.

4) Didn’t go out last night but that resulted in a very interesting discovery. For the first time probably since I moved here I was a) awake at 8 on a Sunday and b) not hungover. So, I decided to take advantage of the situation and go grocery shopping in a completely empty store. Probably because everyone else was either a) at church or b) hungover and in some cases c) both. I doubt that I’d be able to keep this schedule consistently but it is a nice thing to know.

5) To whoever posted the rather helpful comment on Saturday. A) It’s rather tough finding someone older than me at an Ani concert in Lawrence, B) I did actually meet several righteous babes at the show, C) it is quite possible that one was hitting on me, and D) if I had the skills to pick up a girl at an Ani show I’d probably be complaining a lot less about my life right now. But thanks for the comment, I really should have tried something.

6) Oh, and for those of you who have been having to deal with me in the real world, I probably owe a few apologies. I’ve been spending a little too much time in that dark place inside my soul, which leaves me sitting around bitching about my life and hating everything and never bothering to think about the fact that if you hate something it might be nice to try to do something to fix it for a change instead of complaining about it. So, I’ll be focusing on fixing things over the next few months, which should result in either some great revelations or some high comedy. At this point, I’ll take either transcendence or farce.

The five random CDs for the week
1) Zachary Richard “Women in the Room”
2) Chris Mills “Kiss It Goodbye”
3) Cowboy Junkies “One Soul Now” (So much for Excel’s random number generator. Third Cowboy Junkies disc in two weeks)
4) John Hiatt “The Best of John Hiatt”
5) Sarah McLachlan “Touch” (As always, thanks to the Canadian girlfriend for having me listen to this one on my commute. Sheesh.)

More tv memories

Ok, quick comment on yesterday's post. If you really want to waste a portion of your day, check out www.ycdtotv.com the website dedicated to You Can't Do That on Television. There are times when I wonder if spending fifteen minutes or a half hour of my life writing about a tv show I watched as a kid is a good use of my time. Then I come across a site like this and I realize that they are people way more intense about this stuff than I am. I mean, I'm not chasing down former cast members for interviews.

Oh, and Alaistar did kick all kinds of ass. And I completely forgot about the water gag and the torture room sketches. Talk about a show that would have no chance of making it on the air today. But I would give so much money to have the old episodes on DVD. Whoever in Canada is sitting on the rights to these things has the ability to just print money. Come on, if you saw this at Best Buy wouldn't you buy it? I almost bought the full season of The Greatest American Hero and the most memorable thing about that show was the theme song.

(Believe it or not I'm walking on air. I never thought I could feel so free...)

Some people have figured out the easy windfall in the DVD market. They've started to release the ABC afternoon specials, which is jsut a brilliant move. And they've put out some of the cool old shows, like Mork and Mindy, which almost merit viewing (because man was Pam Dawber hot back during the day. This is one of those top 10 Gen X shows that Gen Y will never understand). I mean, I know it is just manufactured nostalgia but there is something cool about getting to revisit the shows of your youth. Even with my 400 channel cable system, I still don't get to watch all of the cool reruns. (Speaking of that, they've released What's Happening, which was also required channel 32 viewing as a kid).

Now what I really want them to release is Emergency, which I would watch every day in the summer since they showed it at 10 in the morning in Chicago. An hour drama on firefighters and ambulence crews. The show wasn't very good but man, anytime when you can guarantee a nine year old kid that he'd get to see fire trucks and hear alarms you knew it was going to be a good day. See, things really were better back in the day.

Have a good weekend everyone.

Forgotten television shows: volume two

As promised, we here at Battling the Current will continue in our retrospective of the forgotten television shows that changed our lives. Today’s entry…

You Can’t Do That On Television

(Otherwise known as proof that Canadians are funny.)

If you were a kid growing up with cable in the mid-80’s this was required daily viewing. I mean, if you ask anyone who grew up in Chicago in that time frame and asked them what they watched growing up here would be the answer. “I watched Bozo in the morning before going to school and then watched G.I. Joe, Transformers, He-Man and You Can’t Do That On Television after school.” It was just a rule. Everyone turned on Nickelodeon every afternoon and watched. Didn’t matter that you were seeing the same episode for the hundredth time, you watched.

Everyone remembers the green slime. If at any point in the show one of the actors answered a question with the words “I don’t know” they had green slime poured over their head. And there was always the one smarmy kid who reveled in the fact that he could always trick everyone else into saying it. This would go on for weeks at a time and when he finally got hit you actually cheered.

But man, there were so many inspired comedy bits on that show. You had the locker gags. The set was just a row of lockers and the actors would just pop out of them and tell really bad jokes for like five minutes. It was like the cool junior high that you didn’t attend. Then there was the firing squad bit. It was never quite explained why a twelve year old would be standing in front of a firing squad in some Banana Republic (the nation, not the store) but they would always figure out a way to make the last request joke funny with the fat commandant always getting shot in the end. And the diner! Running jokes about rats in the food! Now that was comedy.

I’m serious in saying that I probably picked up most of my sense of humor and a lot of my writing style from this show. There was a lot of slapstick and bizarre sketch comedy but a lot of emphasis on being clever and witty. It was noncomformist, no plot, no overall purpose to the show. They broke down the fourth wall. You knew they were all actors, they would show the backstage and talk about their pay but you also knew that it was a show. It was post modernism for ten year olds. It was that first step you took in learning about the absurdities of the world and that the only way to deal with them was to learn to laugh about it. Monty Python for kids, that was the show in a nutshell.

Here is the amazing thing. I’m sitting here with my hair slowly turning gray and I can recite entire sketches from a show that I watched more than half a lifetime ago. I can tell you that the major cast members were Christine, Lisa, Kevin, Alison, and of course Alanis (who went on to become much more famous talking about a guy (Dave Couler actually) and a theater but that’s another story). There are entire years of my life that don’t contain as many memories as I have of this show.

Most people probably never knew this show existed. But for a few of us out there, this is where we learned what comedy was all about.

Coming up in our next installment: Night Court, otherwise known as the comedic genius that is Richard Moll.

Vanity Plates

I'm actually getting to write this a little earlier in the night than I previously thought. Went to the Keller Williams show this evening but left early due to an implementation of the Deadhead Rule. The Deadhead Rule states that if I am at a show where the crowd consists mainly of Deadheads I can leave at any time without feeling bad because doing nothing is probably a better option than hanging out with Deadheads. I'm serious, my dislike for having to be around nineteen year olds (who unless they were going to shows when they were nine never saw the band) trying to act quasi-hippie is off the charts. Plus, I don't think I could get high enough to ever think that wearing a tye-died shirt that says "Jim Morrison An American Poet" is a good idea. Jim Morrison, the most overrated person in the history of the planet.

Changing topics. One of the things that I noticed when I moved out here is that there is an abundance of vanity license plates. And not just vanity plates, really bad plates. Ones that make you question the intelligence of the driver. So in order to share what I've seen I've actually kept track of the plates that I've seen driving around town. And I swear, I am not making any of these up.

• MYHOOPT
• 5REARS
• FAT DADY
• HONKER
• LUV IT
• RCKCHLK
• LA NENA
• RAHEL (Looking at the driver, I believe she was either a) unable or b) too cheap to spell Rachel)
• KNG TUT
• 2CUTE4U
• RASTA (On a car driven by a white guy, naturally)
• PHAT VW (my winner for oxymoron of the year)
• HOLLA (I swear, this was on a car that had a University of Nebraska alumi license plate frame. I believe that just by attending the University of Nebraska that you should never be allowed to use the word "Holla" in a sentence, much less place it on your car.)
• OOHLALA
• COCHISE (Actually, this one is pretty cool)
• SASYMMA (I'm happy I didn't see the driver of this car)
• DOS WHO
• MY PRIUS
• WERLOVD
• VIR2US (Ok, show of hands. How many people think that the driver of this car has to be an insufferable prick? I thought so.)
• WHOOPI
• ORALE
• GUZZLER (on the biggest SUV you've ever seen)
• WHAT (which is cool in a post-modern sort of way)

Again, for those of you who wonder why I'm always ragging on Kansas, well, here is your proof.

Even Infinity can get Crowded

(As most of you know, I just sent out a multi-page report on my life to a bunch of people so I'm kind of out of creativity right now. So here is an old story that was meant to be the introduction to a short story collection, which I'm probably ten years behind in writing. Still, it is my best Douglas Adams impersonation)

There are an abundance of theories on the true nature of the universe. Most have been invented by theoretical physicists who have nothing else to do other than sit in a windowless office in some neglected college physics building wondering if they made the right career choice. Most of these theories are utter nonsense, filled with meaningless Greek letters and bound to exist only in some scientific journal in a dusty library corner. There is one theory however, little known outside the highest scientific and philosophical circles, which would change all perceptions of space and time, history and myth, truth and fiction.
The theory's evolution went something like this. It had been widely accepted for hundreds of years that mankind lived in this big place called the universe and everything in this universe was made up of little pieces of something called matter. This idea was fine by itself and most people just accepted it as the obvious and went on to live productive lives. Scientists can't leave a good idea alone, however, especially one scientist who had spent a little too much time staring at magnet. "If a magnet has a north pole and a south pole, polar opposites if you will, then matter should have its own opposite, anti matter." This theory was met by much laughter and a few federal grants, until one day someone went into a lab and created antimatter.
There was much rejoicing in physics buildings that day. Not only had they showed that their theories can actually be proven true but they had single handedly created the basis for Star Trek.
The expected practice of jumping on the scientific bandwagon continued. Another physicist, looking back at the magnet hypothesis, thought, "If we have a universe made of matter and antimatter exists then there must be a parallel universe exactly like ours except that it is made of antimatter." Joy flooded down the corridors of physics departments that day as a theory that could not be proven was accepted into law, and you knew that this was going to cause numerous papers to be written.
There was one little known tenant to this theory. Quantum theory does not allow only two of something. An event can not exist, be unique, or be infinite so if there are two universes there must be a third and a fourth and so on to infinity. This brought smiles to the faces of the theoretical physicists, knowing that in an infinite variety of universes there must be at least one where they rule the world, or are married to supermodels, or preferably both. In fact, much of the time spent in the office was now specifically dedicated to imagining these parallel universes as opposed to finding a way to reach them.
One night, seemingly unconnected to all these previous events, two overworked physics grad students were arguing after a long Friday night in lab. The argument was not over the experiment, or over deep scientific theory, or even on why they weren't out at a bar like everyone else on campus but whether or not the color of a professor's hideous sweater was orange or red. The argument grew so heated that they broke into the professor's office to take the sweater and perform spectography experiments on it. Whatever the wavelength of the light it refracted, that would be the color of the sweater.
After setting up the experiment one of the students looked at the readout and declared the sweater to be orange. The other in disbelief took a look at the results and said that it must be red. "You must have knocked the machine,” said Ray, for that was his name. "Either that or you don't know how to read," replied Ron. They finally settled on reading the results together. One read 554 angstroms (or whatever the wavelength of red is) the other read 590 angstroms, the wavelength of orange light.
The meter was digital.
They both stepped back to understand the results. They read the same meter but it read different to each of them. It dawned on them that what they perceived the color of the sweater was in fact the wavelength of the light to each of their eyes. Their perceptions were not wrong. This could only mean one thing, that they were at the intersection of two parallel universes, the only difference being the color of a sweater and the display on the meter.
The implications are staggering. All this mucking about trying to find wormholes in the space-time continuum is completely unnecessary. Universes are not parallel but constantly intersecting. It's as if there isn't enough room for all possible universes. Like God couldn't stack all the possible universes one atop another but rather shoved them together and have them intermingle at certain points. Even infinity can get crowded sometimes.
What is more confusing that what we consider a common past is only true because we all believe it to be true. The present may be common, for the most part, for that's where an intersection point is. But the past may be totally different. Rome may never have ruled the world; the Coliseum could just be the ruined shell of a racetrack. What's true in my universe is not true in yours, which explains errors in history books and everyone's misconceptions of the world.
Does this matter? Can we all accept the fact that we are all caught at a common intersection of billions of universes, all slightly different? Is life with blinders on possible, have we been doing it for centuries. Maybe the stories of dragons and faeries are true, not in my universe perhaps but in that of the storyteller. All I know is that the stories that follow are true, at least to those who walked through the mists of time, stepping from one world to the next in search for truth, love, knowledge, redemption, life.

Oscar Play by Play

7:24 P.M.: It’s time for the Oscar play by play. Get ready for some unintentional comedy.

7:25 P.M.: But first, I’ve got to comment on a comment. The muse that appeared in my previous story is not meant to be some junior from UNO majoring in psychology (she is a female lead in another story and I met her in another part of the Quarter). My muse of the bayou is actually Julie Delpy. That entire short story was based on a dream that I had one night where (no lie) I was sitting on a balcony on Rue Orleans having dinner with Julie. If you asked me to list the top ten moments of my life, that dream probably makes the top five. Yeah, that is pretty sad.

7:28 P.M.: (Oh, and the Duke-Kentucky game in 1992 makes the top three.)

7:38 P.M.: So we just equated Shrek to Charlie Chaplin. Never thought that I’d see that happen. Guess that is the downfall of society.

7:41 P.M.: Wow, Kirstin Dunst went really blonde. Not sure if I like that or not.

7:47 P.M.: Oh cool, it is the “let’s put all the nominees on the stage at the same time like it’s the Miss America pageant.” All of this is to save thirty seconds of walking time. How embarrassing is it to be standing on a stage in front of a few thousand people wearing dress clothes that don’t fit and finding out that you lose? If you want to save time, how about cutting out the Counting Crows song that I am going to have to listen to in an hour or so?

7:50 P.M.: Chris Rock is going to have a little bit of a problem tonight. I have a feeling that this crowd might not get his humor. And it would be nice if he could swear. On the other hand. Renee Zelwigger is looking good. Still looks like she doesn’t have an original thought in her head, but she looks good.

7:51 P.M.: Hawkeye and the dude from Wings are going for the same award. And the winner is… Morgan Freeman. Kick ass. He’s deserved one for a while. Bummer for the dude from Wings, though. You know that his career has just reached its peak.

8:04 P.M.: Cate Blanchett (number 11 on my perfect mate list) is giving the award from the crowd. This just feels so weird. I mean, I’ll be happy if the ceremony ends before midnight but now we have people presenting to a camera and not the crowd. The crowd is watching on the jumbotron. And has anyone noticed that Dustin Hoffman has been shown a dozen times so far. Guess that Jack Nicholson wasn’t able to make it this year.

8:12 P.M.: Commercial comments. Good one from Mastercard doing the gas station take off on their own priceless campaign. And is it me or is Andie McDowell’s only acting gig nowadays the L’oreal commercials. Remember when she was a big thing with Four Weddings and a Funeral and Groundhog Day? (Oh, and please don’t ever put Clapton’s Wonderful Tonight in a commercial. God how I hate that song.)

8:18 P.M.: The Science and Technical Awards Oscars. Also known as, “The only chance a guy like me will ever get to meet Scarlett Johansen.”

8:20 P.M.: I’m still waiting for Best Supporting Actress. Who will follow in the footsteps of Mira Sorvino and Marisa Tomei? Add in Cuba Gooding Jr. for Best Supporting Actor maybe you don’t want to win the supporting awards. There is just a little bit of a kiss of death associated with the award.

8:23 P.M.: Cate Blanchett beats out Natalie Portman (perfect mate #2) for the award. Oh damn, she’s married. That sucks. Oh well, I guess I’ll just go console Natalie this weekend, who looked incredibly elegant for a young twenty something sitting in the crowd.

8:36 P.M.: Ok, Kirstin went too blonde. Too unnatural. Probably one of the few times that I would ever criticize the way she looks.

8:39 P.M.: 1) I would pay so much money for someone to yell “Play Mr. Jones” during the Counting Crows song and 2) I still say that this is the best example of luck winning out over talent in my life. Hootie is doing Burger King commercials, Adam Duritz got to date like a dozen actresses and is up for an Oscar. Explain to me how this is fair.

8:47 P.M.: Screenplay awards. Julie Delpy gets her nomination. I’m on the edge of my seat. Is there any justice in this world?

8:48 P.M.: Apparently not.

8:48 P.M.: Damn it.

8:49 P.M.: What the hell, Julie was on screen for like three seconds. I might as well change channels right now. Life just isn’t fair.

8:53 P.M.: Mickey Rooney is in the crowd. Answering the question, “Is Mickey Rooney dead?”

9:08 P.M.: Ah, the Phantom song. Which was originally supposed to be sung by Minnie Driver like it was in the movie (or so I am told). It’s being sung by Beyonce because, well, would you want to hear Minnie Driver sing? True story: Minnie Driver has an album out and has toured behind it. I actually saw a listing for her shows in Ticketmaster and thought, “Wow, Minnie Driver is a really cool name for a band. Like Eve’s Plum.” Never even came to mind that it was the actress. I would have gone just to heckle. (Oh, and man does this song suck. And I’m sorry but Beyonce looks like she is going to win the “Someone set the makeup gun to whore” award with way too much eye makeup on two different occasions.)

9:13 P.M.: Note to Jeremy Irons: ditch the long coat. Man is that a bad look.

9:24 P.M.: Ok, getting to see Penelope Cruz and Selma Hayek simultaneously in hi def is a pretty impressive sight. I still feel screwed over but this helps a little.

9:31 P.M.: Is it me or has there been an unbelievable amount of noise happening off stage tonight? It’s like a bad high school production or something. And who really wants to be hearing Antonio Banderas sing right about now? For Santana this is just another person they’ve tossed his way to sing over one of his guitar solos.

9:39 P.M.: That is a really good look for Natalie Portman. Though at some point someone will notice that she is like only five feet tall. A tiny little thing. Hell of an actress though.

9:55 P.M.: Well, we’ve classed up the In Memoriam section a little bit. Having Yo Yo Ma play makes it more meaningful as opposed to past years where there is always some awkward silence for some poor editor who probably did some incredible work while the actor you remember more from a television show got a standing ovation. It sill is a weird part of the show.

10:01 P.M.: Ok, who did Beyonce’s agent sleep with for this gig? Three songs? She’s not that talented, is she? Did I miss a memo or something?

10:05 P.M.: Life just got a little more fair, as Adam Duritz didn’t win an Oscar. Yep, just a little bit of schadenfreude there.

10:09 P.M.: Hillary Swank just won for Best Actress. We are just flying through the ceremony tonight. Though the note that Hillary is the first female actress nominated for playing a boxer isn’t that impressive given that she is the only female boxer in a film that I can remember. But they are at least they are letting her give a long speech.

10:17 P.M.: Gwyneth is looking good for being a new mom. The dude from Coldplay still goes down as one of the luckiest bastards on the face of the earth.

10:21 P.M.: Yes, Charlie Kaufman finally gets a writing award. Gives me hope that someone out there actually cares for creativity and individuality and uniqueness. This is a really good sign for the universe.

10:29 P.M.: Jamie Foxx wins for Best Actor, becoming the first member of the In Living Color cast to get an Oscar. Beating out such luminaries as Jim Carrey, Jennifer Lopez, and that red headed chick who was in like every other sketch. I can’t really complain with any of the acting awards tonight, all of them are deserved.

10:40 P.M.: Best Picture award time. I think that we have set the land speed record in terms of award show time. Seriously, we are like an hour ahead of schedule right now. Looks like I’ll actually get to sleep in time. Million Dollar Baby wins. I’m telling you, if you want to make it in Hollywood, write a good boxing picture. There was a reason why boxing was one of the first sports shown on television. It is perfect for a screen. Good show overall. Not the most memorable show of all time but not a bad one.


The five random CDs for the week:
1) Mike Plume Band “Fools for the Radio”
2) Tori Amos “From the Choirgirl Hotel”
3) Cowboy Junkies “Studio”
4) Cowboy Junkies “The Trinity Session”
5) Belly “King”

A story about a dream

My ideas come from a lot of places. Sometimes a news story will catch my interest or I'll just see something out of the corner of my eye that will cause me to reflect. Or someone will say a line to me that just stays with me for years afterwards until I can finally place it in a story where it belongs.

What follows came to me in a dream a few years back. I wrote it pretty much without thinking and without editing. In all honesty, it is probably the favorite thing that I've written in the past five years. Since I started the blog a few months back I knew that I would one day post this but wanted to wait until the right moment. Tonight I needed to reread the story and remind myself that the moments in it remain true. And I figured that the time is right. Hope you enjoy it.



I saw my angel today, leaning over the balcony on Orleans. She stood there, blonde hair drifting over her face, watching as the first tourists wobbled their way through the French Quarter.

I was across the street in my overpriced room, morning coffee in hand, the heat slowly waking me. I watched as she glanced around, as her robe twisted about her, as she tried to understand the stories that walked about her. So, I wondered about her story.

I wondered how someone that beautiful, with the face of an angel, with eyes that could pierce your soul from across the street, could be looking out so alone. How her apartment behind her could appear to be so bare, how someone could be about without even a cup of coffee to start the day. I wondered if she was an artist, or a poet, or one of the many who just wander the streets of New Orleans from job to job.

I’m just here to find myself, personally. Oh, and if I happen to write the great American novel while I’m here that would be a plus. Faulkner and Fitzgerald both lived blocks away from here with their angels floating about them.

Maybe that is her story. She is the muse who walks the street of New Orleans. A Calliope of the bayou, inspiring fisherman to become painters, dockworkers to sing for joy, tourists, well, to wonder why they didn’t live here to begin with. She is the girl you see from the corner of your eye, as you walk the Quarter. You search but you never find her, but her beauty is written in your soul and from that moment on wherever you look, she is always there. She is the love that escapes you, the few moments of infinity that define life, the truth behind all of the stories ever written.

We are looking at each other right now, trying to decipher the secrets in each other. I could call out to her, ask her to inspire me, to tell me all of the stories that could possibly be written. But that is a debt that could not be repaid, and all of the glories that I could earn would be empty.

She’s beckoning me, with those eyes, calling to me, asking me to join her. Our stories must intersect. All stories must intersect at some point.

This is New Orleans, where all is joined together.

Quick concert notes...

Some very quick comments from the Ani Difranco show tonight...

• I'd put the crowd at 80-90 percent women. In terms of number of guys who weren't there with their significant other I would venture that I was one of maybe three.
• Yes, I would still definitely state to a large portion of the crowd I epitomize the enemy. Or to put it another way, I represent the machine that people are raging against.
• The good news is that it seems like the dreadlock craze is finally at an end. Sadly, the pierced lip look is still in full effect. I really don't know how this is supposed to look good.
• Opening act was fellow Chicagoan and longtime friend of Bloodshot Records Andrew Bird. He pulled off an impressive Howie Day style "loop the hell out of everything set" featuring violin, guitar and xylophone. Possibly marking the first time that a xylophone had ever been looped in a concert. I'll give him credit, he was doing a lot of cool stuff with the loops, especially with the violin parts.
• Of course, half the crowd wasn't getting him at all and was talking during the set. I also seemed to be in the drinking section of the crowd, as I had more beer spilled on me at this show than I did at Social Distortion.
• For those who know me, which is less expected: that I attend a show that features a mosh pit or that I go to a show where the phrase "Viva la Vulva" is mentioned from the stage?
• It was a fun crowd, as I joked with a couple of people around me who I think were wondering just what in the world I was doing there. They also joked with me about always letting everyone stand in front of me. First of all, what was I to do, elbow the nineteen year old girl to the ground? I was like a foot taller than the rest of the crowd, I think I could happily stand in the back.
• Of course, it is more a matter of desire to experience the full concert effect. I was more than happy to sit back and observe tonight. As opposed to Jay Farrar where I would have knocked people to the ground to be in front of the stage.
• Ani's set was good and interesting. It still might not be music for everyone but I certainly enjoy it. She can definitely write, you can't take that away from her.

Ok, time to get ready for work. I'll add some more notes tomorrow.

Stranger in a Strange Place (Part 1)

In preparation for tomorrow's concert, I thought that I might as well break out the review that I wrote last year of Ani Difranco in concert. Actually, only the first part for reasons that are within my control but aren't of interest to anyone other than my therapist right about now. Enjoy and expect another late nite post coming tomorrow.

Stranger in a Strange Place
(Ani DiFranco/Noe Venerable, Liberty Hall, Lawrence, KS, 1.21.2004)

When people ask me why I go to a particular show I usually have a really good reason. Like I’ve seen the band before and I am a really impressed by their live show. Or I find their album really engaging and want to see if the live show can build upon it. Or even simply because the artist is from Austin and that is good enough for me (reference ‘Sight Unseen’ 1.17.2004)

This show was a first for me. I’ve never gone to a show on a dare before.

That’s being a little too flippant, even for my taste. I had heard of Ani DiFranco before and had even heard a song here or there. I knew there was an unbelievably loyal fanbase and a pretty strong critical backing of her work but I was never drawn to her music. I appreciated it and had no qualms about it but nothing that I would go out of my way for.

But last summer a friend of mine made an effort to counter the onslaught of Neko Case lyrics that end my emails by providing me with some Ani lyrics. Every time she sent another quote I became more and more impressed by how well written and lyrical and insightful the words were on the page. And I became more and more interested in actually seeing her in person.

So, when I saw the ad for her show I had to call her up and ask if I should go.

“Of course you should go. It would be awesome.”

Any advice for my attendance?

“Yeah, wear a skirt.”

It was with this in mind (and the knowledge that I was going to have to call her from the concert to prove that I was, in fact, attending the concert and not watching Duke-Maryland in a bar) that I made my way to Lawrence. After a quick tour of Mass. St. (and the great disappointment that even a college town has music stores that close at seven) I go to the theatre to see if the doors have opened and I see a line. A long line. A block and a half long line.

Well, I guess people standing in line in January is essentially the definition of a loyal fanbase. The last time I stood in line for a show was, well, never.

You could tell it was going to be an eclectic crowd from the line itself. There were the hip KU students. There were the alternative KU students who would be much better suited at a liberal arts school located somewhere other than Kansas. There were a few people who seemed to have taken a wrong turn at the last Grateful Dead concert. And of course, there were a few aging scenesters like myself hoping that the gray hair wasn’t showing just yet.

But the award for coolest people in line goes to the older couple behind me who were given tickets by their son to attend the show. They had what was clearly my quote of the night.

“Our son told us we would probably be the oldest people at the show”
“Yes, thanks for coming.”

(Like I’ve said, one of the themes of my life is finding out just how old I really am.)

Liberty Hall has that great old converted movie theater feel to it. Which is probably because it is an old converted movie theater. A large portion of the crowd in line went to the upstairs balcony where you could sit and watch the show in peace. Which makes no sense to me as I stood on the floor close to the stage. I didn’t crowd up to the stage, there were more than enough people with that intention. I was content to stand at the edge of the crowd with a great sightline and an ability to scan the crowd. And to not be in anyone’s way.

Because let’s face it, I’m an upper class suburban heterosexual white male. From all my previous experience hearing about Ani I was under the distinct impression that to this crowd I was, for all effective purposes, the enemy.

(That’s not entirely true. The 20 year old, Ambercrombie and Fitch wearing, backwards baseball cap guys in the crowd were the true enemies. I was the guy in the CBGB t-shirt who everyone says is the most amazing guy that you could ever meet and that girls describe as “not the type of guy that you want to date but the type of guy you want to marry.” As I get older, that line becomes more and less sensible at the same time.)

While I’m on the subject, a few more notes about the crowd. A surprising number of guys in the audience, probably 30-40 percent of the crowd. Very young crowd, not surprising, and during both acts they were really attentive. One of the best crowds that I’ve seen in years. However, I need to make one fashion trend argument. No white guy can wear dreadlocks and look cool. Sorry, it just doesn’t work. For women, you can either look really, really good or really, really bad.

Oh, and I only saw one person completely trashed at the show. Which is admittedly one more person than I expected to see. Hell, even I felt weird drinking at the show and I wouldn’t feel out of place drinking at a funeral.

At some point here I should really start to write about the music itself.


(Which I'll do tomorrow, I swear)

Planet Simpson

Guess I’ll write about last night Simpsons episode. Not sure why I didn’t write about this last night, obviously it would have been a more fitting subject last night but if I am anything it is out of touch with my reading public. Anyway, some quick notes on the show and the current state of the Simpsons in general.

First of all, last night’s show was the much heralded gay marriage episode. Which Fox had to place a disclaimer and a parental warning in front of, because lord knows that we can’t have cartoon characters, who, technically, do not physically exist, talk freely about such a subject. And there was a big hubbub about which character was going to be revealed to have an alternative lifestyle and it turns out to be Marge’s sister Patty. To the surprise of pretty much no one.

(But is it me or was it odd that Smithers did not make an appearance throughout the entire episode?)

The episode had its moments. Can’t argue with Barney’s twelve steps to recovery or the surprise return of Blinky the three eyed fish. It’s just that the entire gay marriage bit seemed completely tacked on for no apparent reason, even if it did give Homer some great material to work with. They were able to get in their support for the idea, knocked the conservatives down a few pegs, and get some laughs out of the entire deal. Until the ending with the cross dressing golfer that seemed to be a complete cop out and waste of time.

My biggest problem is a problem that I have had with the Simpsons for the last year or so: it’s just not that funny anymore. I mean, it stopped being biting satire and the best show on television a couple of years back when Homer became Captain Wacky and the show plots started to center around how dumb he is. But it still was funnier than ninety percent of what was out there. Now it is barely registering as must see TV and I have been watching from the very first episode. I mean, I had more laughs watching a Family Guy rerun than watching the new Simpsons episode. And for social commentary Chapelle’s Show is a much more relevant show today.

It’s sad to see one of your favorite shows Jump the Shark but I’m pretty sure the Simpsons have done so. For ten years it was the most important and funniest show on television. It just doesn’t have that edge anymore. I hate to say it, but it might be time to let the show roll off into the sunset. Another show will carry the torch. Someone better, even with all the threats from the FCC, because without satire and without humor from the underground the world is a much less enjoyable place.

(Oh, and on a serious note. We'll miss you Hunter. Thanks for showing us that truth and fiction and art and news can be intertwined.)

Jeff Gordon sucks...

Well, I celebrated the beginning of the Nascar season the way I always celebrate the start of the Nascar season: passing out on the couch after staying up too late the night before drinking. I mean, how else are you supposed to prepare yourself for watching cars turn left for four hours. What’s worse is that I actually lost money on the race due to Michael Waltrip blowing an engine about three quarters of the way through the race. Yes, in the last month I’ve lost money on a coin toss and a Nascar race. That’s probably a danger sign, right?

(Oh, and I know that I neglected to write Thursday night about the fact that Duke lost to Virginia Tech. A school where only five people actually know how to play basketball. Honestly, I didn’t even know the score of the game when I did my post. Was at the Finn Brothers concert and came home just assuming that Duke had won the game. As you could expect, I was not a happy camper on Friday morning when I read the box score. Or saw the game on Instant Classic the next night. Oh well, they made up for it by beating Wake Forest tonight.)

Ok, I’m still a little short on ideas tonight so I’m just going to make a few more concert observations. The first one is from the Lyle Lovett show, where at one point the crowd attempted to clap along with the song. Now for most country music you clap on the two and the four. If it is James Brown you hit it on the ones but lets face it, that’s not Lyle’s style. The crowd of course was clapping on the ones, the two the three and a halves and some other beats that you would need to have a degree in advanced calculus to decipher. Yes, it is always fun to watch upper middle class white people try to keep a beat.

Saw Hank Williams III on Friday night. A good show from Hank, a guy who has seriously designed his career so as not to be famous. I may have told this story elsewhere but it is one that I enjoy. Ok, his granddad is the legendary Hank Williams, the original country singer and who is best known for his drinking and dying in the back of a car and not having anyone notice that he was dead for several hours. His dad (who he has barely met) is the guy who sang “Are you ready for some football?” Well, Hank III looks and sounds exactly like his grandfather. And acts like him, too. He’s a guy who grew up listening to punk rock in Texas and has this complete screw the world mentality, countered by the fact that he looks and sounds like this legendary figure. So he sings outlaw country that is mixed with punk and his shows start off as country shows and then turn more and more punk until it officially changes from a Hank III show to an Assjack show, as the band officially changes without anyone actually leaving the stage. Pretty cool.

Last point. Saw a commercial from Burger King today featuring the dude from Hootie and the Blowfish. Wow, if you ever wondered where fifteen minutes of fame will get you in ten years, well, here is your answer.

The five random CDs for the week:
1) Julie Delpy “Julie Delpy” (I swear, Excel randomly picked this one.)
2) Paul Burch and the WPA Ballclub “Blue Notes”
3) Caitlin Cary “I’m Staying Out”
4) U2 “Zooropa”
5) Gear Daddies “Can’t Have Nothing Nice”

Very late post...

Ok, it is unbelievably late (just got back from another concert. It's been one of those weeks...) Anyway, so I'll just write two really quick observations from this past week.

I'll admit that I spend a lot of time complaining about Kansas. And I have to say, it is not for a lack of material. But, Lawrence, KS is one of the coolest college towns that I have ever seen. Mass. St. is like the main college drag that I always dreamed of. A half dozen record stores with incredibly obscure music. Coffee shops everywhere. Cool, hip clothes stores along with places to get all your officially liscenced school products. On any given night, a half dozen bands playing within four blocks of each other. They even have some cool art galleries, including one where I am in continuing negotiations to see if I can get $500 knocked off the price of an original painting. I have no idea how Kansas ended up with such a vibrant art and alternative scene but I really, really appreciate it.

Other thing. A few months ago I decided to upgrade my cable and get the digital package with like a thousand channels. Which allows me to randomly run across something that makes me stop and stare at the screen for an hour. Like BET Jazz, which shows highlights from the Montreal Jazz Festival. Featuring Nina Simone. I know that this doesn't impress most people but I wasn't even sure if live footage of Nina playing actually existed. If you have any love for music you would be awe struck by the performance. I know Bruce sang 57 channels and nothing on, but I think he just needed to upgrade his system.

Have a good weekend everybody.

Quick hits

Quick hits tonight…

1) I know this joke has been hit on by every late night talk show host but Corey Feldman as one of the witnesses at the Michael Jackson trial? I mean, wow. This could be a comic masterpiece. Corey Feldman in his most important role since Meatballs 4. And I am possibly the only person in the world who has actually watched Meatballs 4. Ah, the old days before the Internet when your enjoyment could only come from whatever you could scrounge out of a Blockbuster store.

2) I am also waiting for the prosecuting attorney to go “And for our next witness I would like to call that dude who played Webster.” I would pay good money to see that happen.

3) No hockey season. This really sucks. Maybe not now, but April and May are going to be boring without playoff hockey. There is something about do or die hockey that is really exciting and interesting. Guess will get even more coverage of poker tournaments and the World’s Strongest Woman competition over on ESPN 2.

4) Oh, and if you ever want to have a disturbing experience, come across the World’s Strongest Woman competition at 2 in the morning when you’ve been drinking. It’s always fun to have a thought process of “Hey she’s pretty good looking. Oh, wait a minute…”

5) I have a concert pet peeve I need to vent about. The time on the ticket should mean one of two things: 1) that’s when the doors open or 2) that’s when the first band starts playing. I don’t care which one it is just as long as everyone is consistent about it. After forty shows last year I came to the conclusion that ticket time was when the concert starts. Which on Sunday night wasn’t the case as the first of two opening acts didn’t hit the stage for an hour. And was even worse last night when the opening act didn’t start playing for an hour and a half. Look, I might not like my job but I do need to be awake so for crying out loud, show at least a little consistency.

Sorry, little else to report. More shenanigans tomorrow

Censorship update

Referring back to my Censor This! post back in January...

• Good news. The Blue Valley school district has decided not to remove any books from their reading list, despite the protest of a lot of ill informed parents.
• Bad news. The number of people who actually signed a petition asking for the removal of The Catcher in the Rye from the high school reading list was over 500. Remember folks, these people have the right to vote, drive a car and are apparently parents.
• In what has to be in the running for quote of the year, a parent said the following at the board meeting "If these books, and exposing them to our high-school age students, are wonderful, why don't we or why doesn't the school invite Larry Flynt to put on an assembly or some type of seminar?"
• I only have three words to say to that: Best. Assembly. Ever.
• So just for the record this is Johnson County, KS, where people equate Slaughterhouse Five with the latest issue of Swank.
• But I'd dig a Larry Flynt assembly. Teach kids what the first ammendment right really means. The key to freedom of speech is the freedom of all speech, regardless of whether you agree with it or not. This is one of my sore points, as I am a free speech advocate (really above any other political issue). If you take away people's right to state what they believe you are taking away their right to think and then any idea of freedom and democracy is no longer worth the paper it is written on.
• Oh, and here is what I learned at work today. While taking my ethics compliance training (don't ask) I found out that my time spent at work is officially considered a company asset. Thus implying that for the last year and a half the very big phone company has owned me (literally) for a full one third of the time. Wow, and people wonder why I always seem so depressed.

Commenting on comments

Super made some good comments on my post last night, some of which I need to agree with and some that I feel that I should try to make my point a little clearer. Plus, I’ve got a couple other comments from the Social D show that I need to make.

It probably is pretty punk of me to go to a punk show looking the absolute opposite of what someone would expect at that show. It’s definitely cool that I am one of those “fast track executive types” during the week and on the weekend I’m drinking and listening to music that has my ears ringing for days afterwards. I guess in that case I am pretty confident in my own skin since I was dead certain that no one was going to start any trouble with me (as opposed to the Big Head Todd show where I almost ended up in a fight. You don’t tell me to throw out your beer bottle as long as both of your legs are working.)

And as much as I bitch about it, I’ll readily admit that my life is pretty cool. I do have anything that I could ever want at my fingertips with the knowledge that I earned all of it. I own everything and it’s because of a lot of hard work and effort and late nights in the office. As a result I am now at the point in my life that I could literally do anything that I want to with no concerns or worries in the world. And that is actually the problem…

See, I’ve always worked on five year plans since I was 16 years old. I had my goals for college and my goals for my first job and my goals for business school. Everything was organized and structured and I knew that I was going to work my ass off to accomplish them but I pulled it off. Including ones that I never thought could happen, like being a published writer by the time I was 21. Now I’m really at a loss when it comes to my goals and my direction. Actually, it is more like I know what I want to be and I still have to figure out how to get there.

That’s why the dude with the sideburns impresses me. Sure his life is probably a lot worse than what I imagined it to be Saturday night but you have to admit that it does take courage to grow out sideburns that everyone is going to notice. There is just this ability to say, “This is who I am and screw you if you don’t like it” that I really admire. I do that at times but I hide it. I’ve taken risks but they are all part of what most people would consider a standard life. I’ve never really stepped out on the edge and I’m at a point in my life now where that is what I really, really have to do. And there is a bit of courage that I need to build up to accomplish that little feat.

Again, though I will bitch in the blog (mainly because I think my best writing comes when I am at my most cynical) I am blessed in so many ways it is not even funny. I just want to fill in the missing pieces of my life and get back to the way I was feeling a year and a half ago.

Ok, a few more random comments from Social D

1) One of the opening acts was the Backyard Babies, “The best rock and roll band out of Sweden.” That’s not much of an accomplishment, given that your competition is ABBA. It’s like when the Sugarcubes were called the best band out of Iceland. It is only slightly better than being called the only band out of Iceland.
2) There were a couple of ten year old boys in the crowd. I’m not kidding, they were that young. And crowd surfing. These parents now enter my fabled “They’re either the coolest parents in the world or the absolute worst parents in the world” category.
3) They weren’t even the coolest kids in the crowd. There was a girl sitting at a table by me who was maybe twelve. Wearing glasses and a Ramones T-shirt. If you saw this girl you would immediately think, “This girl is the smartest girl in her class.” And when they played Ramones songs between sets she was singing along with the rest of the crowd. To songs that even I didn’t know. Talk about being cool at an extremely young age. The kids in her class probably don’t even get how cool she is.
4) Ok ladies, I’m not horribly opposed to the tattoo across the small of your back. But “Bon Bon” is probably not going to look that good 40 years and 20 pounds from now. Just a thought.
5) Oh and I heard the best lyrics from a band out of Lawrence ever last night. “You’ve got to get the fuck out of Kansas. You’ve got to make your way to LA. Because you might be the king of this here bar but here is where you are going to stay.” Have to give props to OK Jones for writing that one.

(Oh wait, and since it is February 14 and no one gave me any suggestions. “I wear black on the outside because black is how I feel on the inside.” I’ll avoid the seven years bad luck this time around, though.)

Quick concert note

(Sorry I am going to try to be quicker today, as I a) am just back from a concert b) have to be at work early tomorrow and c) Blogger just ate my last post so I am now going to try to rewrite the entire thing from memory. I probably shouldn't be writing right now since I am running a meeting at 8:30 in the morning that I'll need to be in early to organize but I know that my faithful reader(s) are more interested in my musings on life than my company is in my performance. So, here we go.)

Saw Big Head Todd and the Monsters on Friday and Social Distortion on Saturday. Same place with both shows being sold out. I'm probably the only person who went to both shows since there really isn't much overlap in the fan base when you think about it. If you add in Lyle Lovett last weekend and Ani Difranco next week I can guarantee you that I am the only person who will be at all of those shows. But anyway, the interesting thing is that at Big Head Todd I just got the crap knocked out of me by the crowd. People elbowing me making their way through the crowd, people spilling beer on me, a woman handing me her empty beer bottle and asking me to throw it out in the garbage can that was half a room away like I was her personal servant, other people bitching that I was standing in front of them and they happened to be a foot shorter than me (grow, it's a simple solution). But at Social Distortion there were people actually apologizing as they made their way past you, saying sorry for stepping on your foot, and just being generally nicers. Which isn't what outsiders would expect from a punk show.

But as one guy said to me at the show, "You really don't look like you belong here." And while I will say that ten years ago I would have looked at least a bit more in touch with the crowd he had his point. I did look like a poseur. It doesn't matter that I have been listening to Social D since the '80s, my look is of someone who is not into this scene at all. And you have to understand, the entire punk population of KC was at this show. I mean literally, they could have wiped out every single pierced and tattooed person in the entire city at once (along with a couple of aging music geeks like myself).

But that's not what is sticking with me. There was a guy standing in front of me with full blown, old school, mutton chop side burns. I mean, the type you see on pictures of Martin Van Buren. And he was there with his girlfriend, who was pretty cute and who seemed to be really cool. And it struck me that if you put this guy and myself side by side and asked random people "Who is more successful?" they would pick me. I have no idea what this guy does for a living but I bet if you look at what people typically think of when they think of success (money, position, etc.) I'd have him beat.

But if you looked at who was more comfortable in their own skin and who was enjoying life more and who was happier this guy would have me beat hands down. And that makes me wonder how most people judge success and how that default view of you need to be this certain way to be successful has to be wrong. Because in my eyes, that guy is more succesful than I am. I feel like a poseur wherever I am. It's more obvious at a Social D show because that is all on the surface. I don't think it is much different at work, there I'm just a monkey in nice clothes. It dawned on me when I got back to my apartment tonight and looked around at my cool setup and realized that I have everything that I could ever want at my fingertips. But I have none of the things that I actually need. And I really think the guy who was standing in front of me is not dealing with that question tonight.

The five random CDs for the week.
1) Iris DeMent "My Life"
2) Cowboy Mouth "All You Need Is Live"
3) The Neville Brothers "Family Groove"
4) The Iguanas "Plastic Silver 9 Volt Heart"
5) The Blacks "Just Like Home"

Musings on Dublin...

(Running really late tonight. So, more from my travel journals)

Dublin Town: Well, I did finally make it Dublin and walk the streets of a city which felt like home. The first day was spent in pubs and my hotel mostly. Grabbed lunch in the best pub we found; massive amounts of food and we were able to watch the all Ireland final. I still can’t believe that Galway won the thing and it is still cool when the team captain leads the fans in song afterwards. Basically, I crashed in the hotel room in the afternoon and watched This Week in Baseball. This is where I found out that: McGwire was nearing 70 homers, the Cubs were in a heated pennant race, and Ripken sat out a game. For such a great vacation I sure missed a lot of memorable sporting events.

Anyway, after pub hopping that night which has been described elsewhere I crashed in the hotel again. Dreamed strange dreams again (yeah, Tina was in it and sitting on my lap for some reason. I mentioned it to her the next day and she tried to convince me that when we got back from the club that night we both went to our separate rooms. At least that is the way we both remember it). The next day was my chance to do all the touristy things in Dublin that I have been dreaming of.

I toured Trinity College and saw the Book of Kells. Trinity College actually looks like a college but I wonder how all of the students deal with the amounts of tourists who invade the campus. It can’t be as bad as the kids in Eton experience but it still must be disconcerting. The Book of Kells is awesome, the amount of detail and artistry put into each page in mind boggling. There is symbolism everywhere on the page and I can just imagine the monks working hour after hour on each small detail. That is the glory behind books, the immense effort that was put into the work over a thousand years ago is still appreciated. Also, walked through the Trinity College Library which is another of those rooms which just make me want to be a writer. Just books from floor to ceiling, aisle after aisle, all hundreds of years old. I love imagining how each one of those books were written by one person, putting his life into each page, and then they are housed together. Writing is one form of immortality, because that is you on the page. It might just be ink and paper but at its best, the essence of the author is captured as well.

Did the round on Grafton street which is the major shopping district. Picked up some more of my little trinkets and my Galway jersey which still looks cool. Hit some music stores where I found some unbelievably expensive cd’s but the coolest thing was finding some Uncle Tupelo albums. Maybe there is some hope for this planet after all. All in all, we probably spent too much time on Grafton street but that is what happens when you travel as a group and not as individuals.

I broke away from the group eventually and made my way down O’Connell Street (with the starry plough on high). This was another instance of walking into a history book. The bullet holes in the pillars of the post office, the statue of Parnell, the memorial statue and reflecting pond. There are very few places where you can walk where a revolution began and even fewer where you can stop in bookstores along the way. I did actually hit the Dublin Writers Museum which is one of those places which could only interest people like me. James Joyce’s typewriter, Samuel Beckett’s phone, and more first editions of novels then you would ever find anywhere else. It tried to explain why Ireland and Dublin is home to such an extraordinary group of writers. I think it is because it is a nation of storytellers and drinkers and for the most part they write like they are just spinning tales in a pub. Well, except for Joyce of course who is much easier read when drunk because that is when he finally makes sense.

On the whole, I could spend days walking the streets of Dublin. There are more things to see and do there than I could ever imagine. Plus, there is always another pub to visit.

First lines to books I won't write

(Borrowing these from an outside source. Enjoy)

• Michael Kindness slept.
• In the end, as it was in the beginning and is now, I was a sad sack with time and a harmonica.
• Being the last man on earth ain't all it's cracked up to be.
• I keep asking myself, "Self, when am I going to get my wiffle ball back?"
• "Would you like a bag with that?" the clerk asked clerkishly.
• It was not the best of times - not by a long shot, Slappy.
• Captain Picard and Commander Riker emerged from the Holodeck looking rather sour.
• It is inevitable that the experience of knocking Noxzema facial cleansing cream to the bathroom floor reminds one of springtime, and hyacinths.
• Nomar Garciaparra was born on July 23, 1973 in Whittier, California.
• In retrospect, going back in time just to watch the Velvet Underground play at Max's Kansas City was a terrible, terrible idea.
• "Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha," he thought.
• On second thought, no.
• Erin!

Taking care of business...

Quick notes:

• Props to ND for knocking off Boston College tonight. Finally. It would have been a lot nicer if it was football season but I'll take a victory over BC any way that I can get it right about now.
• That leaves Illinois as the only undefeated team left in college basketball. Wow, I really never expected to have the opportunity to write that sentence.
• Congratulations to Freddy and Kendra for winning The Amazing Race. They were actually one of my favorite teams, they just seemed to be having fun and Kendra is cute as hell. Not sure how in the world Freddy ended up with her but hell of a job on his part.
• The race ended in Chicago where the teams had to find a) the Water Tower (easy), b) Gino's East (easy) and c) Ping Tom Memorial Park (which I had never heard of until tonight). Cab drivers didn't know where this place was. I'm not sure anyone knows where it is. That is impressive.
• The coolest part of the show was this, two teams racing to the finish for one million dollars and what happens? A team gets stopped by a freight train. Unless you've spent a lot of time in Chicago you don't know how common and annoying and heartbreaking the train tracks can be. That was an awesome ending.
• Oh, and Aaron proposed to Hayden when they were eliminated. I think I was the only one on the entire Internet who liked Hayden. She just reminds me of a couple of old flames. Good looking enough that you are proud that you are dating her. Annoying and high maintenance to the point that you question whether it is worth the effort. At the end you figure the pluses offset the minuses and you live with it. Maybe this just says something about me.
• Ok, I need to make a Public Service Announcement to the Bi-State area. Learn how to drive in the friggin snow you idiots! We got two inches of snow today and it crippled the city. If we were in Atlanta that would be acceptable but we're not so here are some helpful hints. 1) Buy a scraper and use it. That doesn't mean clean off a 2 inch by 2 inch section of your windshield, you clean all your windows, your lights, your hood and your roof. 2) Ok, you know how below drive on your transmission you have 3, 2 and 1 that you've never used. This is when you use it. This way you won't go spinning off the road. 3) Leaving work early during the blinding snowstorm so you can sit in traffic in a storm that ends at 5 is probably not a good idea. Just some helpful hints.
• Oh, and on Super's comment on my not mentioning the Pixies in my recital of great Boston bands. I guess I have to say that I find Tanya Donnely and Juliana Hatfield more attractive than Kim Deal. Now Kelly Deal, that is a whole other story. And if we start talking about the time when The Breeders has Kim Deal, Kelly Deal and Tonya Donnely in the band at the same time we'll be here all night.
• Whenever you want to wonder about how cool music was back when I was in college remember this: The Breeders song "Cannonball" was a legitimate hit. Listen to the song again one of these days and you'll be stunned that that song actually was considered a hit.

Valentine's Day Contest...

Ok faithful reader(s), Valentine's Day is only a week away. And you know what that means. Yes, one full week of my complaining about how Valentine's Day is just another Hallmark holiday (like Sweetest Day and Christmas) and it's just a ploy to make people spend lot of money in order to appear falsely romantic. And to put people who have no significant other in their life in such a mental state that it makes you want to throw a chair through a window just to hear the sound that it would make when it hits the ground. As you can see, I have experience with the latter.

So, I'm trying to figure out what to do for Valentine's Day. I mean, I could perform my yearly ritual of listening to Smiths CDs in the dark all night culminating in my punching my hand through a mirror in a misguided attempt to feel that doing so might somehow prove something but you'll have to admit, the act is getting a bit old. But the thing is, I have no idea what to do or how to move from being a self-professed cynical bastard to a guy who would gladly spend money in order to appear falsely romantic.

That's where my faithful reader(s) come in. I'm taking suggestions for what to do for Valentine's Day and how to best meet people. All ideas will be taken seriously. Best one will be accomplished by me, come hell or high water. Ones that are funny will also be accomplished if only to make a great blog posting. (This explains why I'm about to sign up for the It's Just Lunch service. I'll either a) meet someone interesting or b) have such a farcical disaster of an experience that it will make the best blog posting ever). So fire ideas through comments or emails or phone calls or whatever. Let's see what creativity lies on the other side of the internet.

Oh, and some great quotes from the Lyle Lovett concert on Friday.

Lyle: "One thing I like about Kansas City is that I always feel safe here. You just couldn't be any more surrounded by the rest of the country than you are here. Someone would have to go a very long way to mess with you."

Lyle: "The other thing about this town is that you can unashamedly eat as much meat as you possibly can."

Super Bowl Play by Play

4:53 P.M.: In what has to be a bad sign. Charlie Daniels took the stage and played the song “Devil Went Down to Georgia”, changing the line “I told you once you son of a bitch” to “I told you one you son of a gun.” I’m not sure what is worse, the fact that Charlie Daniels was just watched by about a billion people or the fact that we can no longer say the word bitch on national television. Odds of accidental nudity tonight: low

4:57 P.M.: I’m amazed; the Black Eyed Peas actually have more than one song. Or maybe the NBA just has the rights to “Let’s Get It Started”. Nice to see that they changed the crowd from cowboy hats to urban between sets.

4:58 P.M.: One of my favorite bands growing up, Earth Wind and Fire, just took the stage. That makes up for a bad pregame show just by itself.

5:02 P.M.: Might as well explain what I am doing here. Since I am watching the Super Bowl from home I thought that I might as well try to keep a running journal of my thoughts as I watch the game. I have no idea how this is going to work but it should be interesting. Right now, I’m settling down with some pizza and Rolling Rock, which I’m going to try to clean out of my fridge since I bought it last month. To explain the type of guy I am, I still have cans of Miller Genuine Draft Light in my fridge that was given to me at a Memorial Day picnic. I’m pretty sure that I am just waiting for Memorial Day to pass them off on someone else. Or hope they evaporate in the fridge. Or become collector’s items.

5:09 P.M.: I have no idea if there will be a commercial for this film but I have to talk about it. There’s a Vin Diesel comedy coming out this spring where Vin babysits five kids and a pet duck. I’m not kidding. I only need to know two things 1) Who pitched this idea and 2) Can they score me some pot.

5:10 P.M.: Is it me or does it look like Troy Aikman has a permanent concussion? Always looks like he’s about to collapse to the ground.

5:14 P.M.: Thought as I am watching the entertainment portion. Ashlee Simpson is coming to KC in a few months and the front row tickets to her show are available at my local ticket broker for $200+ a ticket. I want to meet the person that buys that ticket. I really hope that it is a parent who really owes their daughter something big. I really don’t want to imagine any other option.

5:19 P.M.: I’ll give the Patriots props for starting “We introduce ourselves as a team.” That is a super cool tradition and breaks up the ten minute “Wait as we introduce the Right Guard” part of the pregame show.

5:33 P.M.: Verizon Wireless has hit upon one of the golden rules of comedy “Monkeys = Funny”

5:36 P.M.: My favorite moment of the entire Super Bowl. A billion people watching world wide, all watching with intent interest, having to be explained “This side is heads and this side is tails.” Ok, the kid tossing the coin is having the highlight of his life.

5:37 P.M.: Stupid kid doesn’t know how to toss a coin. It was tails. I’m down fifty bucks and we haven’t even kicked off yet.

5:42 P.M.: Not a good sign, Eagles have already turned the ball over. Though the call should definitely be overturned.

5:44 P.M.: Bud Light gets the first commercial. Bud Light is not going to get me to jump out of a plane. Wouldn’t even get me out of my chair.

5:45 P.M.: Keanu Reaves as John Constantine (or the Hellblazer as those of us in the comics world know him) is just a travesty. A wooden actor playing an unbelievably cool role. How does he get work?

5:56 P.M.: See, I told you that I didn’t make up the Vin Diesel movie. The only movie that will give you a contact high.

6:02 P.M.: I want to get the world’s opinion right now. Who was the more familiar face in the Diet Pepsi commercial: Cindy Crawford or Carson from Queer Eye? Whatever happened to Cindy’s acting career? One movie with Richard Gere pretty much killed it. Oh, and while the commercial was neat, a website that allows you to reserve website names cheaply is a really stupid business plan. It’s not like the good ones aren’t already taken and for personal websites you can do what I do and have a free one from Blogger.

6:10 P.M.: You know, back in my Fantasy League draft, people thought I was nuts drafting Terrell Owens early in the second round. Three catches and a thirty yard catch with a broken leg shows that I know what I’m doing. Other than picking Matt Hasselback, from now on I never draft someone from Boston College.

6:17 P.M.: So, we’ve had commercials that show the real purpose of camera phones and what happens when you use a wireless headset. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, always use a camera phone. It’s fun, it’s productive and in the long run it buys me beer.

6:23 P.M.: Fumble recovery by former Illini Eugene Wilson. If the Eagles keep on turning it over this is going to be a very ugly game.

6:27 P.M.: Tom Brady just got sacked. Notice how no one mentions how he used to date Tara Reid. That just doesn’t sound nearly as impressive as it did three years ago. Now it’s like half of the U.S. has dated Tara Reid. She is about one step away from the inevitable Playboy shoot or a lifetime of Cinemax movies right about now.

6:34 P.M.: I just find it cool the L.J. Smith has a tattoo of L on one arm and J on the other. Don’t see that every day.

6:35 P.M.: Touchdown L.J. Smith! Ok, I’m going to get a tattoo of E on one arm and C on the other just to honor my man L. J. It will go great with that barbed wire one I’m getting on my bicep. Just about ten years behind the times.

6:36 P.M.: Hey, M. C. Hammer got work. Good for him. Wonder how many times that commercial has to be shown before the IRS will leave him alone. It still has to be a better gig than appearing on The Surreal Life. (Oh and if you want to watch freaky reality shows, turn to VH1. You’ve got The Surreal Life with Mini-Me, Peter Brady, one of the Go Gos, and the pro wrestler formerly known as Chyna. Very, very disturbing. Add to that Celebrity Fit Club, where you get to watch fat celebrities sweat. Including the least successful Baldwin brother, in his most important role ever. It will make you feel skinny just by watching it.)

6:41 P.M.: Degree wins with best commercial so far with “Mama’s Boy.” With the mother who spews six different guilt trips. That’s awesome.

6:53 P.M.: More monkeys! Now in cubicles! Just like my real life. There just isn’t anything funnier than a monkey…

7:02 P.M.: Touchdown David Givens. The Domer gets on the board. I’ve got to say, Tom Brady just knows how to take a team down the field. He still isn’t a classic quarterback but he gets it done. (Oh, and most insane stat that I just heard. John Stallworth catching a touchdown pass in eight straight playoff games. That is just incredible.)

7:14 P.M.: Halftime. Time to switch over to the Girls Gone Wild Halftime Games. (Not really, but it is available for $15 bucks on my cable system. Excuse me, I’ve somehow locked up my cable system changing channels really quickly and have to fix it.)

7:38 P.M.: Sorry, no smarmy comments on the Paul McCartney halftime show. Was on the phone with my parents. Look, pop culture criticism has to stop every once in a while…

7:51 P.M.: Touchdown Mike Vrabel. Who now has two more touchdowns than Walter Payton does in the Super Bowl. Yes, I’m still a bitter Bears fan about that one. I’ll never be able to forgive Mike Ditka for having the Fridge score instead of Walter on that last one. Unless you watched the Bears your entire life, I’m not sure if you will ever understand.

8:01 P.M.: Monkeys in suits and hardhats. I sense we have a theme for the night….

8:02 P.M.: You know, since this is on Fox I feel that I have a question that must be raised. Whatever happened to Jennifer Love Hewitt? Seriously, did she vanish from the planet or something? I mean, she was the next big thing there for awhile and now I don’t think she could get an off-Broadway show right now. And Lacey Chabert I believe fell into a black hole. She hasn’t done anything since Not Another Teen Movie.

8:06 P.M.: The annual Cialis commercial. “See our ad in Golf Magazine”, now that is target marketing for you. And let’s face it, Cialis has the best possible damaging side effects ever.

8:13 P.M.: Touchdown Brian Westbrook. Damn that was a good throw. McNabb just rifled it through two guys for the score. That was the best pass of the night so far.

8:20 P.M.: Note to the Fox announcers: the championship games were two weeks ago, not last week you moron. It’s no surprise you never won a real ring Collinsworth.

8:27 P.M.: Corey Dillon redeems himself with a touchdown in the Super Bowl. Got to hand it to a guy who had to deal with playing in Cincinatti and setting a ton of records for a team that lost every game and who was never going to be noticed. Philadelphia’s defense seems to be having some serious problems in stopping anything that New England throws at it.

8:44 P.M.: Field goal by the Pats. Eagles need a lot of help if they want to come back in this game. (Oh, and does Nicole Ritchie officially win the award for “Most fame for the least amount of work.” Seriously, it’s not like Lionel Ritchie was that famous to begin with. It’s like the ultimate in being in the right place at the right time.)

8:48 P.M: Interception by Bruschi. Bad throw by McNabb. That might be it.

9:00 P.M.: Hey Philly, it’s called a no huddle offense. Use it every once in a while.

9:05 P.M.: Touchdown by Greg Lewis. Philly is back with a chance with less than two minutes to go. It’s going to be a fun ending…

9:17 P.M.: Interception. Ball game.

A good game. The lack of the entries near the end is a sign that I was actually watching the game as opposed to writing. The commercials weren’t as good as in recent years but a fun night. Now will Charlie Weis please report to Notre Dame immediately. And while I congratulate the good people of Boston, including a number of my good friends, seriously, enough is enough. How many championships does one town need? It’s going to be twenty years since my last NFL title. Can’t you share every once in a while?

The five random CDs for the week.

1) Old Crow Medicine Show “Old Crow Medicine Show”
2) R.E.M. “Monster”
3) The Connells “Still Life” (Damn you Canadian girlfriend!)
4) Coldplay “Live 2003”
5) Lucinda Williams “World Without Tears”

Preparations for Sunday

So, the Super Bowl is Sunday, along with the lingerie bowl and the Girls Gone Wild Halftime Spectacular. I’m not making those last two up, they both are going to be on at halftime. You just have to be amazed at what they can put on pay per view. I mean, what other sporting event can have pay per views specifically scheduled for intermission? But what happened to Bud Bowl? I actually lost money one year betting on it.

(For the record, I am choosing heads on my yearly coin flip bet. That is the ultimate gambler bet.)

My first point is actually in response to the Sports Guy column on ESPN Page 2 today. He mentioned that the Bears 46-10 victory in Super Bowl XX was one of the worst fifty days of his life (since he’s from Boston and had to watch the Patriots just get humiliated). The thing is, I’m from Chicago and that day ranks in my top ten lifetime. If they would have let Payton score I may have been forced to rank it as the best day of my life. There is nothing that beats watching your team just demolish everyone and everything in their path. (Note to the Sports Guy: The score was 46-10 and not 45-10 like he wrote in the column today. What, are you trying to take away a Kevin Butler extra point? Want to forget that safety in the first half? The Bears scored 46, just like the defense.)

I thought that I should figure out who I am cheering for on Sunday. Here’s my thought process.

I have more friends from Boston than Philadelphia so that makes me lean towards the Pats. But, they’ve already won two Super Bowls, the Red Sox won in October and they’ll probably just award the Stanley Cup to the Bruins so I think that Boston has enough hardware right now, thank you very much.

Philadelphia has Terrell Owens, who carried my fantasy team for the first half of the season. Of course, his broken leg destroyed my playoff run and cost me a lot of money.

New England has future ND coach Charlie Weis. However, if Weis was a true Domer he would have thrown the game against Indy so he could, you know, maybe have a chance to be recruiting prior to signing day.

Deion Branch was also on my fantasy team and he nursed a sore knee for eight weeks and screwed up a) my depth at wide receiver and b) my plans to package him with Jake Delhomme in order to pick up Corey Dillon. But the Pats make it up by actually playing ND’s David Givens at wide receiver, thus showing that there was a wide receiver at ND post-Tim Brown.

Musically, Boston has provided us with Extreme, Aerosmith and well, Boston. Philadelphia has given us Will Smith and in a roundabout way the song Eye of the Tiger from Rocky III. We’ll consider that a push. (I also have to admit that musically Boston also gave us the Throwing Muses and the Blake Babies, which makes up for Aerosmith in the period after their great songs in the late 70’s up to when they just decided to have entire albums written around Alicia Silverstone videos.)

It’s coming down to this in the end for me. Tom Brady went to Michigan. Donovan McNabb was the leader of the Mt. Carmel Caravan, the greatest dynasty in IHSA history.

Go Eagles.

Mad Dog and Glory

Since it is February 2, I had to spend the night watching the Bill Murray classic “What About Bob?”….

(Ok, at least I think that joke is funny. Admittedly, it doesn’t take much to make me laugh at times.)

So, the rodent saw its shadow so we are going to have six more weeks of winter. You know, I think I have read an explanation as to the logic behind that since if it is sunny out that typically means winter storms are coming and the ground is colder or some mumbo jumbo like that. Of course, I was treated to live coverage of the events in Pennsylvania on my morning news. I wouldn’t mind being one of the old guys in a tux and an overcoat who gets to stand on stage once a year and mumble some official words while everyone else is drunk off their ass. Just a great example of how we need very little of an excuse to celebrate.

(That said, I’m happy that my morning news was showing that as opposed to discussing the debate that is going on in Kansas about whether to teach evolution and creationism in school. I mean, Clarence Darrow’s ghost (which hangs around the Field Museum in Chicago) must go nuts every time it hears about something like this. I mean, wow, I guess this is what the red states are really like.)

Sorry I don’t have anything fun to say about the State of the Union address tonight since I kind of didn’t watch it. I just couldn’t bring myself to listen to W talk about his plans for his second and third terms. It’s like there is enough going on in my life to be upset about and watching a speech that will piss me off with every other sentence probably is not a good thing right now. Plus, Duke-Wake Forest is on and that trumps the leader of the free world. Of course, Duke is losing as I write this so maybe it just isn’t my night.

One last note, based on the CD I listened to today. If you have never heard any of Cat Power’s music, you should really try to listen to one of her CDs. I’m not saying buy it, since it is definitely not for everyone but it is worth listening. Think of it as Beth Orton without the electornica backings and a bit more low key and slightly more depressing. Ok, I’m not sure if anything I just wrote would be considered good things but You are Free is a really good album. Very well written songs and lots of hidden meaning. Lots of lines that strike you when you are driving home from work late at night. Check it out.

More travel stories...

Some very random thoughts…

1) Thanks to the dedicated research of my reader(s), we now know what a barrow and a gilt is. Though I certainly do not remember any of those terms being mentioned in Charlotte’s Web, which is how I learned everything that I know about farm animals. Admittedly, if the concept of barrowing was brought into Charlotte’s Web there would be a whole other level of drama to the story. Anyway, we still have one important question left unanswered, “Why is the state of Missouri so interested in the sexual history of my livestock?”
2) Thinking about Charlotte’s Web, why is it that there are so many classic children stories that end in the most absolutely depressing way possible? Is it just a really nice way of telling an eight year old that life is just a bleak and pointless existence and that any feeling of happiness is just a fleeting moment that is more an imagination of happiness than any true psychological state? It’s like reading nursery tales by Sartre.
3) I’m not sure what is more amazing: the fact that Winter X Games exist or that I will sit around and watch it for hours on end. First of all, I love sports that people made up one afternoon with no discernable way of determining who is better than anyone else. Plus, there is this great Nascar feel to it, since if you’re watching eight snowmobiles doing 100 foot jumps you know that someone is going to end up regretting competing in the morning. Of course, with no hockey this has become ninety percent of ESPN’s schedule.
4) Props to David Letterman for giving a true, heartfelt tribute to Johnny Carson last night. Just a classy way for him to thank someone who made his career. For those of you who missed it, his monologue consisted entirely of jokes that Johnny had sent him over the past few months and much of the rest of the show was just stories. Nothing forced, everything just true and honest. It was really neat to watch.
5) Ok, my creativity is a bit low right now. So, one more travel journal entry before I call it a night…


All right, Swede Hanson:
Irish television is much like British television, up to the point that they just steal the BBC feeds and show them. What this means is limited channel selection, most showing American shows that you have already seen. I usually watched the British Sky News, which is a British CNN. Since I was keeping really odd hours I was never able to catch what would be considered prime time programming. But, the mid afternoon sports programming was fascinating.

See, while in Dublin I was usually in my room at four or five in the afternoon getting ready to go to dinner and all that with some time on my hands. So, since the hotel had Sky Sports that is what I watched. I expected the Tour de France coverage, which was excellent but I had just not been able to get into it. I also watched the touring car races, including ones with big rigs racing down these road courses. If you ever wonder where the footage in the world’s worst car crashes comes from I think this is it. One of the more fascinating things that I watched was the world lawn bowling championship. Apparently, bocce ball is a competitive sport in Australia because there was a crowd for this rather enthralling event. Well, that probably is not the right word for it. Two guys, rolling balls on the ground, with announcers commenting on the style seemed to be the most bizarre thing in the world. Lastly, despite my best effort I still don’t understand cricket. I don’t understand the scoring, or the positions, or all of these graphs which they would put on screen at odd intervals which never seemed to correspond to anything that had happened before or since. At least in rugby you have violence, you might not know who is winning or why but you sure know who is getting the crap knocked out of them.

This leads to the most bizarre thing that happened to me on the entire trip. Monday night, getting ready to go down to dinner and see a play. Flipping around I see a wrestling ring and notice that Rocky Johnson is wrestling. After some quick internal calculations I come to the conclusion that I am watching the WWF circa 1982. Welcome to WWF Classic. Mondays at 5 on Sky Sports. It was a time warp, literally, as I watched Rocky wrestle against some prelim bum. I was sitting there laughing at the crowd which was a couple of rows deep, the Patterson and McMahon announce team, and the sheer fact that this would be a hit in America. For the next match Swede Hanson was wrestling and I had to make a decision, go downstairs and see a play or continue to watch this. Sadly, I can now say that I am an adult because I decided that George Bernard Shaw would be a better choice than whoever would have been in the next match, probably a Samoan or the Iron Sheik.